LIZ BRAUN, QMI Agency

A simple case of Transformers on the water, Battleship has plenty of action and explosions, but somehow it all unfolds without energy.

The movie is bloated. It's too long. The action seems derivative and anything that's not a battle scene is tedious. Battleship should be a crowd pleaser, a big popcorn summer movie with plenty of entertainment kick. But it isn't.

Battleship starts with a bit of blather about earth trying to contact a similar planet by transmitting signals into deep space, and blah blah blah. Then we meet Alex (Taylor Kitsch), a big screw-up. We encounter Alex as he makes a fool of himself over a woman (Brooklyn Decker) he sees in a bar. He's always in trouble for one thing or another, but his brother (Alexander Skarsgard) convinces him to straighten up and join the Navy. So he does. Then he shows he's still bull-headed during a soccer game against the Japanese Navy; there must be someone who'll care about all this, but most everyone else will be wondering when the heck stuff is going to start to blow up.

Then the aliens arrive! Stuff blows up good! AC/DC blasts in the background!

The alien communications ship crashes and burns all over Japan, wiping out thousands of people and destroying lots of cool skyscrapers. The rest of the alien ships crash into the water near Hawaii, where the U.S. battleships are. It's not long before they begin to rain down bombs on the American fleet. The aliens isolate the area with an invisible shield and use some very cool-looking killing implements. Once outside their impressive space ships, though, they look a lot like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Pity.

What follows are alien attacks and battleship retaliation, with enough fight scenes to make most viewers start to wonder when the heck stuff will finally stop blowing up. The writing is such that you don't care about any of the characters, even though some of them are portrayed by Rihanna, Liam Neeson, and people who appear to be real-life old salts and Navy vets.

Lacklustre movies like Battleship used to get a passing grade on the strength of impressive special effects and CGI work, but that's not good enough anymore.

Anyone who has seen The Avengers knows that even in the blockbuster world of good vs. evil, you can still expect dynamite entertainment. As opposed to just the dynamite.